Three Gorges Dam Project Posted May 24, 2004 at 12:00 am

I woke up, showered, and had another predominantly Western-style breakfast at the Three Gorges Hotel. All the hotels we’ve stayed at offer a very similar breakfast buffet. We departed the hotel around 9 A.M.

We rode the tour buses up to the lookout point of the Three Gorges Project. At the top of this hill, there was a gift shop and a scale model of the dam site. I took pictures and checked out the shop goods. They had some pretty purple jade figures, but they were all very expensive.

We left the lookout point and tried to ride down to the cofferdam, but there was too much congestion on the very narrow road and we had to turn back. We rode up to the top of the dam instead. We were given free reign to walk around the area as we pleased. But there is only so much you can see from the outside. I’m disappointed that we didn’t get to see the dam’s inner workings. I thought the whole purpose of visiting the dam was to explore the engineering behind it. From the outside, our perspective is little better than a tourist’s. We finished up with a group picture at the ground level.

We went back to the hotel to listen to the same presentation delivered by Professor Wang on the boat; only this time, it wasn’t new to us and it was delivered by an uninspiring speaker. It felt like a huge waste of our time. After the presentation, we left the dam site area for a late lunch in Yichang City. After lunch, we caught a 4:05 P.M. flight out of Yichang for Beijing.

After a forty minute bus ride back to the Chang An Grand Hotel in Beijing, the rest of the night was ours. I caught up with a group headed for the Hard Rock Cafe; one of many as it turned out. I had a Hickory Barbeque Bacon Cheeseburger, a Pepsi, and cheesecake for a total of 153 RMB ($18.64) including a 15% service charge. It was the most expensive meal I’ve had on the trip, but in a way it was also the best. I also bought two HRC T-shirts (one for Vance and one for myself) and a HRC glass for Dad. The total came to 410 RMB ($49.94)—again, the most expensive I’ve had on the trip. I retired for the evening when we got back to the hotel.